


Beast Of Burden

by Fuzzydemolitionsquad



Category: Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back
Genre: Gen, Han Solo - Freeform, Luke Skywalker - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25770856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzzydemolitionsquad/pseuds/Fuzzydemolitionsquad
Summary: A taun-taun races across Hoth's blistering cold plain. Why does her rider push her so?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Beast Of Burden

**Author's Note:**

> A very short story I thought up the other night.

The cold wind howled, a ghastly cumulation of howls, the sounds of the be-wailing of a dead herd-mate. Wedged between the noise and the bitter cold, like an impaling horn, was pain. 

It wasn’t the shards of iced snow, battering my leathery face and body like frigid nails. No, I was gestated in this all-encompassing white womb, this planet of one season. I am fat and my coat is thick and oily. I can divert the hot blood in my core to my hairless extremities, my serpentine tail, my scaly talons. 

My pain is given me by my current master. A cruel man, gruff of voice and heavy of hand. He shouts at me to run faster. Am I not running fast enough? I give you my all! You punch my flanks with your booted heels and all I can do is my best. Up steep dunes of snow I bear your weight. I am sunk to my gaskins yet I plow through for you. Why? Because I am of the herd and the herd does what the herd-leader asks.

A terrible amount of time passes.You stand in the stirrups and smack your rump against my spine. You slap my cheeks raw with the reins. I manage to run faster. You are frightened and it frightens me. You are filled with dread and so am I. Something deep inside me tears, like the fabric of your strange ‘clothes’. I stumble. My agony is great–––and yet you show no pity. Instead you curse me when the hot lifeblood I vomit freezes and hits your eyes.

I think of my stall inside the base. I think of succulent lichens heaped in my food trough. Of gentle hands stroking my face. I hear ‘good girl’, whatever that means. I lower my head for the gentle woman in white. I nuzzle her dark hair.

We are on a flat stretch now. I continue to keep up my pace. For you, herd-leader. My lungs are rent and I struggle to breath. The vapor streaming from my head is strange-colored and reeks of metal ore. In the distance, a pale form lies, a veil of an old man standing before him. The veil-man disappears. I know I am dying.

Another kick. My flanks are pulverized. We get closer to the prone form and I feel a fleeting joy. I have done my duty. Am I a ‘good girl’? You leap from the saddle and I stand shaking, hemorrhaging from nose and mouth. You trudge toward to the one you have sought. I sense your commingled terror and relief. 

And just as you embrace him and lift him in your arms my heart bursts. I fall over into the drifts, finally free of your tortures. I sputter and breath no more but still I live. 

I live.

The man you found speaks strange utterances. Tears freeze on your cheeks. You drag him to me and fumble with something on his belt. A contraption of man, a tool, a weapon. There is a loud snap and a sizzling hiss. Snow flakes turn to steam before they hit the sacrificial blade of light. I feel my belly being slit from ribs to vent. I smell the burning of my hair and fat and flesh. I grunt as the heavy weight of my bowels boil forth from my body in a fat gray mass.

The man you have brought to me is dying. My head turns so that I may look at him. He is young, sandy-haired and pink as a calf’s nose. I remember him and suddenly I know why you broke me into pieces. I forgive you. I take the young man's body into me and he fills me with a warmth as I fill him with the same. He curls inside me like a fetus and I let myself slip into nothing-ness, the light of him washing me free of pain.


End file.
